Test Discussion Survival Mode Season 3

Quite literally every game Chill - including this one on many many levels, SM is no different.

The industry is cut throat and there are lots of games competing for a players attention and money.

There is a balance between time investment, difficulty and satisfaction.

If you get that balance wrong then players disengage and stop spending and stop playing and instead play a game that they feel rewards them better for the time investment.

The point I was making, that hopefully you can appreciate is that at the same time as I agree with you that it shouldn't be trageted at people who want to spend no time in it at all, it also shouldn't be targeted or built for a player that seemingly has nothing better to do in their life for 6 weeks than play a video game all day every day for that entire period.

Neither extremity is the right approach

Having said the post above this one what I'm also saying is that, everyone agrees the health pools were too low before, but they're also too high now.

With that being the case, it is my view however that the compromise is closer back towards that initial lower end than it is the higher end where it currently is.

Thanks

General Feedback Continued:

• The Volatile adds 11-19 and beyond still only serve to artificially increase the duration of the round. The Volatile adds should just be removed in favor of the Poseidon pools. There are some rounds like 11 where you can solo tank and have the add with the boss and then rounds like 12 where you need 3 tanks one for each boss and the add. There will be moments where it becomes immune and even more so if the controller doesn’t understand not to use stuns on it or use BOP Commlink artifact and even with our tank trying his hardest there were multiple times per round it would explode and bring everyone to 10% health which at higher rounds could cause needless wipes just due to a single add and no point to dps it as it instantly respawns. Turns into just 1 tank hitting gale or a chrono for 10+min and in the case of R12 it took our group over 26min with the buffed health pools. The volatile bots also persist through round completions keeping players in combat and if you don’t kill the bot that spawned during the add waves another volatile add will spawn when the boss fight begins.

Round 11 Baron Von Savage

• Nothing really to note, took 6min at buffed health levels 3 dps. Baron we’ve fought multiple times in SM so its all fine tuned now

R12 Catwoman & Carol Ferris

• Catwoman’s Passionate Embrace aoe needs to be significantly reduced in the picture I am midrange from catwoman and the animation of the damage is only melee around the player but the explosive damage has a greater 360 area which in the smaller room size of Teen Titans Sim this attack wont work it will continually down players like we experienced.
• Round 12 took us over 26min at buffed health levels and all of Catwoman’s attacks needs to be reduced by 30% or so damage wise. Groups will struggle with catwoman in 12 which isn’t needed at that level. Carol is fine, she is counter heavy and all the group dmging attacks can be blocked or lunged so she can stay the same.

R13 Deathstroke

• Deathstroke same as Baron Von Savage we’ve fought him multiple times and have it fine tuned besides the buffed health pool and we had a solo tank and took 6min

R14 Darkfather

• The Parademon Grenadier Grenade Barrage damage needs to be reduced by 20-25% for R14 add waves. The grenades one shot and multiple ones are fired in a 360 arc which can lead to easy wipes on the add waves which shouldn’t happen at that round level
• Darkfather’s Throw (batarang) needs to be reduced by 20-25% in R14 it will one shot and hit multiple times or players because it’s a conic attack and each batarang hits for over 200k and there is no tell on the attack he just spins his body and throws them instantly and have a decent range to them too. He can also launch the attack mid motion too while he is walking

R15 Evil Cosmic Boy

• This may not be possible at this point but Cosmic Boys I believe its called Primary Attack but could be wrong it is the attack where he throws 2 grey balls at the player and they are massive damage in R15 and the issue is they are Grey balls against a Grey floor, against a Grey walls and other grey balls so its really hard to notice and see it. Not sure if it can be tagged another colour or size changed or some sort of aura added to it so that it is visible to the tanks and players.
• If you are not willing to remove the Volatile Bots could they at least be removed from add rounds with adds already themselves? We have volatiles mixed in with the cosmic boy with leads to immunity and exploding where there already is the rotating grey balls, the opposite charges and cosmic boy’s attacks hitting at range so the additional explosion damage from the volatile can easily lead to a group wipe just in itself.
• The Ensorcelled ProbeTek Technician ability to heal Evil Cosmic Boy needs to be removed or significantly reduced. As you can see in the attached clip a) references what I was referring to about barely being able to see the grey balls thrown at you and b) the tank pulled the add and it just started walking towards Cosmic Boy and healed him 1cm of health every 0.5second. That translates to multiple minutes of extra dpsing, especially at R25 where the adds will take longer to kill. Round took 20min

R16 Lex Luthor

• Lex Luthor, nothing to note here took 8min or so and we have fought him multiple times over Season 1-2 and FOS SM. I still feel that Lex should be removed and Krona added to his own round.

R17 Minotaur

• Minotaur, nothing really to note took 13min. The chains sometimes still bug out and not stun him but worked most of the time. Reinforcement that Volatiles not required, already have Poseidon pools and spinning axes in the round.

R18 Possessed Beast Boy

• Possessed Beast Boy took 17min due to issues. When Beast Boy transforms into a new phase if he is against the wall or near the wall he can transform into the wall and become immune and reset his health. This happened on the Dog transformation so we had to fight dog form from 100% into phoenix form and then again during phoenix form it become immune and we had to fight phoenix from 100% to 0.
• Fire Blast damage needs to be reduced by 15-20% on R18 as Phoenix just turns his head and fires the fireballs at you which you die from the multiple hits. They can technically be dodged but you have to be completely ready and any player in a channel will not have time to cancel the channel and then dodge. There seems to be no tell on when it would use the fireballs
• You can see in the attached clip below the time we have to react to those fireballs and it can easily down multiple players (yes we were grouped) and the 2nd time no way any might dps in channels can react to that in time. Then at the end of the clip you see the reset health

will it be possible to tank krona r19 with amazon deflection? sorry if i can't try by myself on test server. but my pc launch and close the game since many years

Incoming updates for Survival Mode - will be in the next update to PC Test:

• Enemy health adjusted based on latest feedback - higher than initial health and lower than the 2nd pass
• Boss Rounds change:
  • The sixth round bosses are now Vice and Furious Metallo
  • Krona is still the ninth round boss but is on his own
• Krona has a slight pause while he points before Arbitrary Bash does it's damage
• Krona's no longer targets pets with Arbitrary Bash
• Tanks can break out of Krona's Imprison encasement
• Reduced the radius of Catwoman's Passionate Embrace
• Volatile Robots are now Security Robots - they behave the same but are a nuisance instead of deadly
• Active added mechanics such as Abyssal Eruption and Security Robots will start when a wave or boss fight starts and will stop when a wave or boss fight ends
• Reduced damage from Parademon Grenadier's Grenade Barrage
• Reduced damage from Darkfather's Batarang Throw
• Reduced damage from Cosmic Boy's metal ball "Primary Attack"
• Ensorcelled ProbeTek Technician will heal the boss much less and heal the boss much less often
• Beast Boy will blink to the center of the room before transforming
• Beast Boy's bird form will do less damage with Fire Blast

- Quixotic

What I noticed during bird form of Beast boy is he acts like phoenix boss. Looks like he attacks to closest person. These are the moments that you became the closest person to the boss for brief seconds and I think that prox agro shift triggers the fire balls. I did not see him throwing fireballs when tank is the closest one to boss.

skip to 00:02 and 00:24


Lastly I think that much frequent agro shifts causing beast boy to evade.

Hey Quixotic, looks like this update didn't apply, still checking but so far
-Lex is still 6
-still volatile bots
-vice and krona are still on 9
- R19 both vice and krona had 200million health each
-Superman had 275million health on 20

will check health pools

Confirmed I couldn't see any of the mentioned hotfix changes but was able to get some more feedback:

Continued Feedback:

• The special drops in SM are tied to the Group Loot menu, which would definitely cause some raging when a player loses their Abyssal Horns to the pug player that died at the start of the round that rolled a need of 99 or worse the group leader changing to master looter and taking all the SM drops without the other members knowing.
• The mechanic from Source Wall has found its way into SM on every Even Round 22-30. Just wanted to make sure that was intended to also be active with the pools and security robots? or are the robots intended for Odd Rounds with the Pools?
• The issue with the Infectious Ire is that even if you spread out and avoid each player you still take a damage tick from it. This will lead to issues throughout the rounds with damage on the tank that is 100% unavoidable. Remove the damage unless you hit multiple players etc but if you are alone it shouldn't have a damage component tied to it.

Yup - looks like those changes weren't deployed. I'm not sure what happened, but I'll let people know so that it can be corrected.

- Quixotic

Im not saying i agree with everything you doing however i want to thanks you and all otheres who testing SM i would like to help but i dont have time for this . I love SM specialy when its not to easy ! my 5 cents is i dont want to see tank "lunge escape" mechanic like we had before .That was quite sillly when only way to pass boss was holding meele weapon attack all over the place becouse if you dont you got 1 shoot .

The bug is back , we cant pull them , when i pull them , they dont come to me

The fix for that didn't make it onto Test yesterday. None of the recent changes did. Those changes and fixes should be on Test a bit later today once it gets the latest server build.

- Quixotic

Just ran 1-9 (tank had to leave on 10) and I have to say that the health is in a MUCH better spot than it was prior to the initial and 2nd pass. I think it's actually in a good spot where everything isn't just going to melt but it also doesn't feel too lengthy either (at least for 1-10). For the most part, I tried paying attention to the other NPC updates as well on this and everything seems to be a much better improvement. I'll provide more feedback as I come across other things in testing and I'm sure others will have ample feedback to provide as well. Thanks again!

~Warped

Feedback on round 16 and 18

I tanked Metallo at round 16. He seemed "okay" with his damage and health. Just a few points:

• He uses his ability attacks more than his weapon attacks. Its just like how I remember him from Oan SM. Thats fine. One thing tho he has a skull attack where he supposed to charge and shoot a big red ball. Most of the time he cancels that charge and he either does a block or skips to another weapon/ability attack immediately.
  
  That "skull charge" triggers the "lunge me" reflex on players. Its well coded boss but most of the time theres not even enough window to lunge that "skull charge" if/when he decides to cancel it. Tank or players can get tricked and give blue/get KOed in higher rounds because of Metallo's sudden block or Tank can be exposed to another weapon/ability attack because he/she wanted to lunge him.
  Im not saying this behavior must change because at the end R-16 was beatable.but I'm wondering how much that RNG type of "skull cancellations" can cause trouble on R26.
  
  While Im giving this feedback I also account that he is a carryover boss from arguable easier SM round and Im assuming he is designed for diffculty of Oan but Im curious if he will be as "easy" as how he was in Oan with there being an extra round(round 26) in season 3. Again, Im not saying somethings should change with Metallo but just wondering how that skull cancels will play out in round 26.
  
  TL;DR: Metallo's "skull cancels" can cause same RNG type of effect like how Krona's pre-fix Arbitary Bash attack did.(in a different sense)

I also tanked beast boy on round 18. Even tho it was 18 I tried to think it like round 28:

• While he was in bird form I find myself rolling back and forth in hopes of dodging his unpredicable attacks(excluding fireballs. they are visible) for his entire bird form duration. If im right his bird form attacks hits you in any range meaning you cant really avoid them. Its just scripted to deal damage. (Correct me if im wrong) Also I didnt really try to lunge any of his bird form attacks so im not sure if we are able to interrupt him or not.
  While not knowing if it is changed with this latest test server hotfix, I know beast boy as bird form and bosses like phoenix must be tanked in proximity range meaning you have less chance to kite or gray range tank him. Otherwise beast boy's agro will shift to other players. Whle Im aware it is one of 3 latest rounds and supposed to be hard it still didnt feel "okay" with unending rolling.(thinking it like R28 vision)
• Dog form in the other hand seemed okay compared to bird form. Beast boy still has proximity agro while he is in dog form but tank can kite him with ease with just keeping a safe distance(where he cant bite).

**My thoughts on beast boy's behaviors can change with further testing**

General Feedback Continued:

• The Statue of Flash block broke the tank on Round 20 during the Solar Flare. The other statues thus far have not noticed any block breaking during that phase since the past change

• Carol Ferris's Absolute Devotion on Round 22 will one shot players blocking if they are not 100% full health while they block. Could that ability be changed to be in line with other abilities of similar nature where if you block it takes you to 5% or 10% health?

• Metallo's Energy Pull can a slight delay be added from after the animation where Metallo's raises his arms to telegraph the pull but at the moment it happens directly after the tell which doesn't give time to react and it kills on 16 and 26 (which is fine) if a 1-2 second delay was added this gives time for the group to community for the tank to give immunity or use their breakout trinkets. A skull chevron is not required.

• The Security Robot might be the most OP npc ever when it procs 100% of your supercharge is taken, you lose 90% of your power pool and deal 1 dmg to all npc's for I think it was 10 seconds. This is actually stronger than the volatile which only impacted your health. The biggest concern here is the power reduction in combination of the supercharge. There will be moments where the security robot will become 100% immune to CC effects due to it breaking out, which couldn't be helped unless it was zero willpower. When it explodes the tanks cannot actively use an ability without a soder or power so in that moment where you need a shield or a heal the player will be helpless, even if you call out when the robot will die. If you had supercharge you could save your SC for those moments as it is no power cost. What I think will be a good compromise to his if possible:
  1. Have the Security Robot either a) drain your power b) drain your supercharge or c) reduce damage to 1 ticks. This way it adds an RNG component to the npc and doesn't overly interfere because all together those effects can be broken but individually they are a nuisance like you mentioned previously
  2. Reduce the drains to 50% so 50% of your power is drain, 50% supercharge and keep the proc all 3 effects
  3. Reduce the health on the Robot and larger delay in the spawn to where groups can just kill the robot to not have to worry about the effect and it won't instantly respawn like the volatile's would.

any of those 3 changes could work

will continue to post any future feedback.

Sorry I need to proofread better before hitting submit. For the Security Robot option 1 I intended to say that each time the robot died it would choose one of the 3 effects to proc and not just all 3 at once. That would be the RNG aspect where you could randomly have one of the three effects applied.

I assumed this is what you meant lol. I do agree that this needs to be adjusted along with everything else you mentioned in your above post.

I think Klark's feedback is good as well - especially with Metallo. I like how you kept the feedback with SM round 26 and 28 in mind as well as these will be crucial rounds where a lot of the feedback presented will matter.

General Feedback Continued:

• When the Security Robot explodes and an Ally it out it will interrupt the ally and it will just stand still until the duration is complete. That may not be preventable but wanted to mention it

I see this in content on a regular basis, when the HoL bot gets interrupted it will often just stand there and do nothing. Happens most frequently in the Ultraman fight in the alert where the boss does multiple types of knockbacks, encasements, etc.